Me too. All I remember is that I could make the neck go up and I would constantly fall into pits. That was the game. Everyone was thinking. "ET! Space creature with powers! This is going to be awesome! Nope: Neck go up, fall in a pit. Can't get out. If you do, you fall in another pit. Actually I think I put a mental "hit" on the developers of that game. Now I'm old enough to follow through on that. They should at least get a blanket party for that shit.

You know, when I was 15, 16, 17-years-old, I spent five hours a day juggling, and I probably spent six hours a day seriously listening to music. And if I were 16 now, I would put that time into playing video games.

The thing that old people don’t understand is – you know if you’ve never heard Bob Dylan, and someone listened to him for 15 minutes, you’re not going to get it. You are just not going to understand. You have to put in hours and hours to start to understand the form, and the same thing is true for gaming. You’re not going to just look at a first-person shooter where you are killing zombies and understand the nuances.

There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can’t do it in five minutes. You can’t listen to The Rite of Spring once and understand what Stravinsky was all about. It seems like you should at least have the grace to say you don’t know, instead of saying that what other people are doing is wrong.

The cliché of the nerdy kid who doesn’t go outside and just plays games is completely untrue. And it’s also true for the nerdy kid who studies comic books and turns into this genius, and it is also true for the nerdy kid who listens to every nerdy thing that Led Zeppelin put out. That kind of obsession in a 16-year-old is not ugly. It’s beautiful. That kind of obsession is going to lead to a sophisticated 30-year-old who has a background in that artform. It just seems so simple, and yet I’m constantly in these big arguments with people on the computer who are talking about, “I would never let my kid do this and this in a video game.” And these are adults who when they were children were dropping acid and going to see the Grateful Dead.

I mean, the Grateful Dead is provably s***ty music. It’s impossible – it’s theoretically impossible to make a video game as bad as the Grateful Dead. I throw that out there as a challenge.

I like how some of you say that the Grateful Dead suck and you would never listen to them. To that I ask did you really even read the quote? Listen to them for hours, days, however long it takes for you to understand them. Not just 5 minutes and done. Then and only then can you say that they suck.

I grew up with Deadhead parents who followed the band across America in their youth before settling down and having my sisters and I. They are still hardcore fans so we grew up listening to it. Our favorite lullaby (other than Eight Days a Week by the Beatles) was Daddy's Gonna Take You Home, we woke up to Shakedown Street and fell asleep to Me and My Uncle. For God's sake my name is Cassidy. The Grateful Dead was the soundtrack of my childhood.

From all this I think it's fair to say that I have a pretty valid opinion of the Grateful Dead, being someone who is constantly submersed in it without having to have chosen whether or not to do so. So here it is:

The Grateful Dead is NOT shit, it is simply music that you need to feel beyond hearing to truly experience. Turn off all the lights, close your eyes and allow your heartbeat to sync to the bass and your breathing to the fluid sound of Jerry's voice. While you're at it, enjoy a tub of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, made by everyone's favorite Deadheads. Let the music become a part of you and be yourself a part of the music. Now you understand the Grateful Dead.

From all this I think it's fair to say that I have a pretty valid opinion of the Grateful Dead, being someone who is constantly submersed in it without having to have chosen whether or not to do so.

That is the opposite of logic. You've been indoctrinated since you were a child to love the band. As you say, their music was the soundtrack to your life. It doesn't matter what they sound like, you would still associate the music with your memories, and your feelings aroused by those memories would inform your opinion of the music.

Reminds me of the first time I tried to get into Pink Floyd. I listened to Dark Side of the Moon like 3 times in a row and I just didn't get it. How the hell were these guys famous? Why does everyone like them? There's nothing to this music!

And then one day someone had it on in the car. I was in the passenger seat and was dozing off. In that halfway point between asleep and awake, I suddenly understood. It was like hearing Pink Floyd for the first time. I sat up suddenly, it all made sense. So this is what everyone was talking about! It took time and an altered state of mind to finally get it, but I finally did.

I think most people just skipped straight to the altered state of mind bit, but I was never one to do things the easy way.

I don't get how he says nobody can understand Bob Dylan without listening to him for hours and hours, and then in the same breath ride off the grateful dead. As a Dylan fan, Zeppelin fan, a Deadhead and a videogame nerd, this quote perplexes me.

Zero hard evidence here, but Penn Jillet, being the rabid music fan that he is and that he was alive during the heyday of the dead, most likely has listened to a ton of the dead.

Side note: I've listened to a ton of the dead. Spent most of my college years claiming/trying to be a fan. I'm sorry, it's soft song writing with chaotic mediocre guitar playing, most of it poorly recorded. I would have loved to have seen them live, but I never want to hear one of their songs again.

My husband was/is a dead head, he has bootlegs officials, PBS specials on VHS, every damn thing they ever recorded. So it's been 10 years since we met, I have heard all of the grateful dead in every variation of every song, sound, and Donna cat screech. It's all god fucking awful, just noise and confusion and heroin and awful awful awful. I love my husband but I'd burn it all if given half the chance just yuck... On the other hand I totally love Rush now.

I mean, it's not all awful. I hear that sometimes the live shows were really bad, but a lot of the studio recordings are just regular old kinda pretty music. It's hard to take serious affront to, say, Uncle John's Band.

You realize you just read this wonderful, thought-provoking piece openness and you call Desert Bus a bad game? You can't truly understand the game just by playing it for 8 hours. You can't begin to comprehend it's subtle deepness and intricate storytelling elements without playing for a few days at least.

Pen isn't given enough credit. He is a completely understanding and tolerant human being. He is an example for people to follow.

If anyone saw the celebrity apprentice, this is the reason he did so well. He didn't start flipping out when he disagreed, he worked to an agreement and tried to view it from other people perspectives.

Eh, I agree with him to a point, but it's good to have balance in life for a lot of reasons. Also, it's unlikely that playing 6 hours of video games a day will lead you to become a video game designer. Now that's true of mostly everything, but there aren't that many ancillary benefits to playing video games. If I swam 6 hours a day and didn't make it as a swimmer at least I'd be really in shape. If I spent 6 hours a day socializing and meeting people I might not turn into a public speaker but at least I'd be good at socializing. Being good at video games is not a skill that translates well into many other things in life.

Every time this quote gets kicked around it surprises me how many people don't get he's being ironic when he says the Dead are provably shitty music. The Dead are icons, with half a century of songs and concerts and legions of people who make their music a way of life. They're the quintessential jam band. They're pioneers of music-as-cultural experience. For the love of Jerry, its irony people.

Grateful Dead were awesome. It's just that they were really fucked up at most of their shows. Especially Jerry. I feel the same way about NOFX. At least one out of three times you see them they will be totally useless, but if you see them semi-sober, they are probably the best punk band you can find.

He had me up until the grateful dead. I love the dead and they are in no way "Shitty music." Maybe you don't like them but at least respect them as an art form. Musically speaking they did (and continue to do) some pretty cool stuff, objectively speaking.

The Grateful Dead are pretty awesome. Teller should have listened to one of the May '77 shows. Those are the best, though I don't think the 5-8-77 show is the best, like most people, I like 5-17-77 in Tuscaloosa a lot better.

Didn't Penn & Teller take themselves up on those words and make a very experimental (read: shitty) game ? I remember something about an 8h interstate drive, all you had to do was hold the forward button for 8h and you got one point, out of the many thousands you get get in the various levels.